PKK claims Ankara attack on Turkish Aerospace Industries after deadly blast

# PKK claims Ankara attack on Turkish Aerospace Industries after deadly blast

*Event date: 2024-10-25*

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, said on 2024-10-25 that it was behind the attack on the Turkish Aerospace Industries facility near Ankara that killed five people and injured 22.

France 24 reported that the group said the assault was carried out by a team from its Immortals Battalion and that it involved two militants, a man and a woman. The PKK said the operation had been planned for a long time. Turkish officials had already said they believed the group was responsible, and the government responded with air strikes on PKK targets in Iraq and Syria.

The attack hit one of Turkey's most sensitive defence sites and quickly became part of a broader cycle of confrontation. According to the reporting, Turkish authorities said the attackers had infiltrated from Syria and that one of them detonated herself during the assault. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said there would be no easing of the campaign against the PKK and described the overnight bombardment as a heavy price paid by what he called terrorists.

The PKK has fought an on-and-off insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is designated a terror organisation by Turkey and its Western allies. The report placed the Ankara attack against a backdrop of renewed political debate in Turkey over the Kurdish question. On the preceding Tuesday, a leading figure in the nationalist MHP party had floated the idea of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan coming to parliament to renounce violence and dissolve the movement. The next day Ocalan received his first family visit since 2020.

That sequence of events gave the attack extra political weight. The PKK denied any link to recent developments, saying the operation had been in preparation for a long time. The timing nevertheless sharpened the sense that both military pressure and political maneuvering around the Kurdish conflict were moving at the same time, with the attack taking place just as a potential opening was being discussed in public.

The Turkish response was not limited to rhetoric. France 24 reported that warplanes hit militant positions in Iraq and Syria after the Ankara strike, and that later fighting in north and east Syria intensified. A Syria war monitor said Turkish drone strikes killed civilians in the 24 hours after the attack, while Turkish forces continued to reject claims that they were targeting civilian infrastructure.

For Ankara, the event became a test of security around a central defence industry target. For Turkey's wider conflict with the PKK, it was another reminder that the insurgency can still reach the capital and prompt immediate cross-border retaliation. The reporting available on 2024-10-25 showed both the scale of the casualties and the speed with which the attack fed into regional military escalation.